Bikepacking The Rogue Zone

Despite growing up in Oregon, my consistent range there never really spread much into the southwest corner of the state.  Which is somewhat inexplicable, since it's an amazing part of the country, much less the state, with a dramatic coastline, great rivers, good mountains, the state's only national park, and zillions of miles of great riding on roads and trails.  So when we got an invitation to join our old friends Matt and Leigh on a Rogue river trip, we jumped on it.

Well, sort of jumped on it.  In about the year Nineteen Hundred and Ninety One I did paddle the Rogue, but my recollections of it were not that great, for some reason:  almost no rapids, short for a multi-day trip, and jet boats are allowed to travel upstream.  So over the last 20 years that Ashley and I have been together we've done lots of rivers, and even though she at times has said "I wanna go do the Rogue!" I've not been too enthusiastic about it, especially now that we live 12 hours away vs the 4 hours from Portland that I had when I first did it.  But the opportunity to do a trip with Leigh and Matt was a great one, and when Ashley said "let's combine it with a bike tour!" I was in, and hoping that my feeble memory of a mediocre river was wrong. 

As everyone knows, the word of the summer in the west was "Fires."  It seemed like all of California was on fire, BC was up in flames, Utah had its share, and also SW Oregon.  When I called a bike shop near Medford to get some ideas for potential riding routes they pointed out that they hadn't seen any of the hills around their place for over a month, and a quick check of airnow.gov indicated that Ashland was buried in the Red Zone.  But closer to the coast it seemed to be a little better due to coastal breezes or somesuch, and we finally decided that if we were going to be at the Rogue anyway we might has well explore the riding through the Siskiyou mountains that the Rogue cuts through.  So we decided to drive right to the river put in, leave our car there, do a nice 5 day loop back to the car, then jump off our bikes and into our boats for the 4 day river trip. 

This was a great plan, because being a multi-sport enthusiast I have a dumb habit of being on my way to a river and saying "this would be great riding!" and when I'm riding near a river I say "Wow, I really want to paddle that!" and this was going to satisfy both those urges! 

Looking downstream from the put in....from the bridge we were crossing on our bikes. 

As we started our climb out of the Rogue valley, we got a look from on high at the infamous Rainie Falls, which looms two miles down from the put in:

Which we knew we'd be facing in a few days, but for now all we had to do was ride on beautiful one-lane paved and gravel roads where we'd see at most a couple of cars per hour.

Being from Utah we reveled in the greenery, but were also happy when we found a roadside hike up to a peak that would give us a bird's eye view of the Siskiyous

And a lot of gnarly clear cuts

apparently we were not the first - nor the most exciting - summitteers of the little peak

The peak was named Mt Bolivar, named by a guy way back in the day who apparently was a big fan of Simon Bolivar of South American independence fame; what better way to memorialize a Venezuelan general than to name a little butte in SW Oregon for him?  

We utilized the famous bikepack-hike anti-theft technique of chammy-side out:

It worked!  no one stole our bikes.  

Our general route was to go from the Rogue put in up and over the mountains to the coast at Coos Bay, then down the coast, back through the mountains to the Rogue near the takeout, and then back through the mountains on the shuttle road to the put in.  From the drier, oak-ier inland side we soon transitioned over to the rainforest, where they grow them trees big:

And there are nice waterfalls:

and more sublime riding

The signs were aged well:

But we deciphered "Oregon Coast" and the arrow so we shrugged and followed those through the maze of forest roads.  

and we were happy to discover that we were on an actual bike route

Only in bicycle-mad Oregon?  

As we came out of the mountains we were rolling through flat farmlands, which is good/bad; great riding, but as day-ends loom and you're still far from a town there aren't many camping opportunities.  So we rolled up to a nice farmhouse, knocked on the door, and nice-guy Bill let us set up camp in his yard:

Bill came out later and had a beer with us, and we learned that his great grandparents came over on the wagon trail from Medford in 1873, a year after the trail had been put in, and his grandparents built the home based on plans they had bought from Sears Roebuck (the house was almost an exact replica of the house of a neighbor of ours in rural west Portland back in the day).  So Bill was most definitely a "local", and told us how he had flipped pancakes at the nearby grange hall when Cycle Oregon came through a coupla years prior, and he also mentioned that they hadn't gotten any rain   -on the Oregon Coast, one of the rainiest places ever - since mid May!  Tough on ranching.  

But the following morning in the Coquille Valley did have a bit of fog and dew:

In addition to allowing the ability to meet nice folks along the way, bike touring provides the opportunity to actually stop at the little historical info turnouts you always blow past in your car:

And in Oregon - with no salt on its roads and thus no rust - you get to see some funky old cars:

a sick Fastback

I thought it was interesting that their little local paper was called "The World"

The broader view, from the Oregon Coast

And of course, late summer in the Northwest means....many things, but importantly, it's blackberry season!

roadside power food

Soon enough we popped out in Coos Bay, which I'd never been to but have long known about it as the original hometown of Steve Prefontaine, whom I wrote about a coupla years ago in a post, so we had to swing by the town's mural memorial and geek out for a moment:

Coos Bay was our northernmost point, and we needed to go south along the coast.  Doing a bit of research we found a good alternative to the busy coast highway called the "Seven Devils" route.  According to what we read, it was infamous among coastal bike tourers for its difficulty, so we prepared ourselves for some good grinding.  However, according to what I could find on various map stuff it only encompassed 1500 feet of climbing over theoretically 7 climbs and 11 miles?  I figured that must be wrong and we'd be on something more exciting; there were even helmet cam videos of people "doing the Seven Devils!"  

there she goes!  

But after doing some roly-poly climbs  -some on gravel - and finding ourselves at the highway 101 Ash rode up to me and said "did we miss it?"  1500 feet of vert over 5-7 climbs is indeed not too much, though it is almost car-free and has a nice secluded beach to visit

The Seven Devils road ends in the nice little coast town of Bandon, where we were able to fill ourselves with fresh seafood and local beer before launching south on the main highway.  

shot as I was precariously going no-hands while trying to not veer into traffic. 

The Coastal Route is a bit of a classic bike tour, but we agreed that it's a good representation of why more people don't bike tour; it's more efficient to get places on bigger roads, and many cyclists see bike touring as means to get places efficiently, which puts them on too-busy roads, where people in cars see them and think "wow, that's shitty and dangerous riding", when the reality is that it's usually not far to this kind of riding:

and in Oregon you get actual Bike Routes!

On the coast highway we did get a chance to see some roadside cranberry harvesting:

Not many places in the US grow cranberries; interesting that they grow in bogs. 

Soon enough we were spinning up the Elk River, which I was embarrassed to have never heard of despite it looking like a great 20 mile section of whitewater (with a lot of rain) and eventually we climbed out of the Elk drainage up and over the mountains to drop down into the Rogue again:

We had about a 14 mile descent to the river on a chilly morning

And we saw our first evidence of the well-advertised fires:

Queue Deep Purple guitar riff....

But it wasn't bad, and we were relieved that our last segment back up and over to the car was indeed open after having been closed for weeks due to a fire.  

it started with a 17 mile climb, with fires looming in the distance:

and then we got into the meat of it:

still off in the distance

hard to believe these oversized hot tubs provide any reasonable amount of water for a forest fire? 

They spray fire retardant on the trees next to the road to protect the road, but it looked like the retardant was pretty much napalm itself since it had already killed the vegetation.  

And we had a wicked fun 20 mile (??!!?) descent through the recent burn back down to the river

And about 10 minutes after we got to our car a bunch of trucks with kayaks on them rolled up and there was our river crew, and we were poised for the second phase of our bike/paddle adventure!  (in the next post). 

BikePacking the Sawatch Part II

A follow up to the "real" story of bikepacking the Sawatch/Collegiate range between Buena Vista, Salida, and Crested Butte.....on one hand I can't believe that I spent an entire post yapping about a trip that I didn't yet actually start, but I seem to be able to yap at too-much-length about pretty-near anything!

Ultimately Fred and I rambled out of his nice place above Boulder and headed for Buena Vista.  BV is a cool little town; I first visited there about 3 eons ago to see if I wanted to be a river guide, and even though I didn't do that (and I'm glad I didn't) it's a great place, and has only improved over the last few years since I've been there:  they put in a nice play wave on the Arkansas river right in town, they are building out the downtown area to take better advantage of the riverfront (ala Salida), and it's got a lot of fun local businesses that seem to be thriving.  And the recreation is top notch, with great kayaking nearby, killer mountain bike trails, and a plethora of hiking opportunities looming high above on the Collegiate 14'ers.

The Colorado Trail is a 500+ mile trail that stretches from Denver to Durango, and 'Rado-ans are quite proud of it, as they should be; linking together "a trail" out of many networks of trails that traverses a huge chunk of a huge chunk of mountains is impressive.  It seems that it's got the most popularity as a take-it-in-chunks hiking route, but the growth of bikepacking in general and the evolution of the bags to carry ever-lighter gear has meant a lot of folks are doing it on bikes.  And of course there's a race:  The Colorado Trail Race (CTR) has been going for the last 10 years and has resulted in some dudes doing it in less than 4 days, which is astounding; the nearby Great Divide route (a little ways to the east) has guys averaging 150 miles/day on mostly-gravel roads; if what we saw is any indication, the Colorado Trail is not only mostly singletrack but much of it is pretty stout singletrack.  Fred's plan was to use the CT as a bit of a conduit to a bunch of great riding that wasn't part of the CT proper, which gave me both an opportunity to nibble a bit on the CT and do some other, more-unusual, and generally higher alpine trails as well.

A trip report can be fun - and I do a lot of them, and try to make them fun - but I've read way too many of them that can get pretty tedious.   "And then we did this!  And then we did that!  Day 2; we woke up to a beautiful sunrise, had another freeze dried breakfast and coffee and tea til it warmed up, then we rode all day, and gosh was it tiring!  But we met some nice people at a cafe along the way and slayed some great singletrack!  And while I didn't know the area before now I do, so I'll go into painful details about our route, in the very off chance that someone out there may want to replicate what we did, because it was so awesome!"  I'm actually tempted to write a parody of the cliche'd Trip Report one of these days.  This trip was great; Fred put together an incredible route that had us riding  - and pushing/carrying - up some long, hard climbs and indeed slaying a ton of great singletrack descents, with fun mix of buffed to medium to really burly singletrack, with some stellar campsites and plenty of water burbling out to keep us hydrated.  But for me to go through a day-by-day synopsis of what we did would be a bit repetitive, so I'm going to keep it simple and do some highlights.

That said, if you are interested, here's the route:  we followed the CT from Cottonwood Pass road, under mounts Princeton and Antero and then up to the Monarch Crest, which sports a big handful of long, technical descents down to valleys on either side.  After 2 days we ended up in Salida, where I was able to get a new headset for my retro-bike (starting to close in on the $$ I might have paid for a new, more-appropriate bike!) and picked up Chad, whose wife MerriLee gave us a ride back up the highway to the Monarch Crest again, we went down the backside towards Gunnison, then did a long back climb up to connect into the famous Alpine Tunnel and an equally-well-known singletrack descent from there, then a painful 5000+ foot climb to the summit of 14er Mt Antero, descended an unmarked trail back down to the east to the Colorado Trail, and went "backwards" on the Colorado Trail to our starting point.  It wasn't a ton of miles, but a lot of vert.

Some highlights:
After we made the final, painful climb to the Monarch Crest:

We met a guy who was on a monthlong solo backpack:

We had avoided going high on our first couple of days because we heard it was going to be windy up there, and asked this guy about it.  He said - in deadpan seriousness - "yeah, it was so windy that I had wind blowing up one nostril and blowing snot out the other!"  We roared in laughter, and he didn't think it was that funny.  As a shoe guy, I'm always checking out people's footwear, and he had an unusual scene going on:

His toe had been sticking out for a few days, but he didn't want to buy another pair because they were too much $$, and even though his mom somehow found out about it and wanted to get him a pair, he "didn't want to be a mooch."

We slayed a bunch of singletrack, from mild to wild:

Fred! Fred!  You'rs supposed to ride ON the trail, not across it!  

and did some free-range riding:

ground up a lot of steep, dramatic climbs, some on the bikes:

and some off the bikes:

25% grades, dust, and babyheads....

It's not often that you get heel blisters on a bike ride, but this wasn't an average "ride"

We rode as far as we could on Mount Antero, then did the final 800' or so hike to the summit.  I utilized my tried and true ride-to-hike bicycle security technique:

hang the shorts shammy-side out to dry; it has never failed in keeping the bike safe from wannabe bikepack thieves!  

Coloradans love their 14-ers;

and being a Coloradan, Chad celebrated appropriately:

Of course, we had to share the "roads" with some of the burlyboyz in their internal combustion rigs:

But we saw evidence that simpler machines can prevail

a pussymobile outing gone awry.

Colorado is somewhat unusual to have such big mountains juxtaposed pretty closely to towns:

awaiting my new headset in Salida

Making friends with the Absolute Bikes shop dog, whilst drinking a shop-supplied beer while they fit me in to fix my bike!  

and we never had to carry more than a day or two's worth of food, and had some pretty civilized meals:

not your typical freeze dried meal....

this bikepacking stuff is tough!  

Tho I did have to do some gnawing for some energy on one of the climbs:

There were some good high-altitude bike-robatics:

and some very lame ones:

it was all I could do to get that wheel off the ground, much less ride it with Chad's prowess!  (he has a good party trick of riding a wheelie around....without a front wheel!)

When these guys stopped to put on their pads:

I knew it was gonna get real:

And I did some hike-a-biking, downhill:

We were able to get in some night riding

this terrible pic is an example of why people like Fred get paid to take photos; his shots of this trail at sunset are incredible. Once he's cleared to share them I'll share as well.  

We toted around a really nice set of lights from Light and Motion and they were partially paying for the trip, so we did a bit of a mid-day siesta and started a long climb in the late afternoon, and ended up at about 12,000 feet with with the wind blowing doing a bunch of night shots, followed by some of the gnarliest trail we saw on the whole trip.  Fun and memorable evening, though.

Did some more pushing:

to some nice big mountain views:

and some more singletrack-slayin'

I stayed committed to the one-pair-of socks thing (and shoes) for the whole trip; I had to dry them out once after a bunch of creek crossings on a 10 mile descent of the Agate Creek trail:

And then we were done, and back to Boulder, where it was great to see Mike with a bit more life in his eyes and a bit more movement in his legs

And for the record, my efforts to bikepack-ize my ancient Fisher Gitchee Gumi turned out to be fruitful.

 As noted, the headset needed replacing but that's just a wear thing that I shoulda done before I left, and was off the back of Fred and Chad when the trail got burly and they simply pointed their enduro bikes through and over the many, many rocks, but for the most part the bike was just fine, and I was glad for the ability to run a frame bag and keep the extra weight off my back.  They say that late adopters are the most enthusiastic, and I gotta say that my eyes have been opened to the possibilities that these simple new bags create for bike-based adventures; I'd say the game-change is comparable to that represented by pack rafts.    We did meet a couple who was doing the whole 2800 mile great divide route on basically the same bike that I was considering buying, but I think they got a little carried away and brought too much stuff:

Thanks again to Fred for a) having the idea for the trip, b) putting in the time to come up with a truly challenging and spectacular route, c) getting the sweet gear for the trip and beyond, d) inviting me, and e) being a great pard for this and any other trip.  And thanks to Chad for also being a great pard, and for both of them for taking a few of the (better!) pictures shown here.

I'm looking forward to another trip, and hopefully Mike will be able to join on that one!